ABHL-01
John Jenkins Designs
Not yet released - expected in early February.
William Prescott (February 20th, 1726 – October 13th 1795) was a Colonel in the Revolutionary War, who commanded the American forces in the Battle of Bunker Hill. Prescott is known for his order to his soldiers, “Do not fire until you see the whites of their eyes”, so that the rebel troops would shoot at the enemy at shorter ranges, and therefore more accurately and lethally, and also conserve their limited stocks of ammunition.
On the 16th of June 1775, General Artemas Ward, the commander in chief, issued an order directing Prescott and over a thousand men to proceed to Bunker Hill and erect a fortification.
The detachment sterted from Cambridge Common at dark, proceeding silently to Bunker Hill. There at about 11 o’clock pm, the troops commenced building the entrenchments as laid out by Captain Richard Gridley.
“The breast work or redoubt was only constructed of such earth as the party had thrown up after the middle of the night and was not more than breast high to a man of medium height. Colonel Prescott being a very tall man, six feet and two or three inches in height, his head and shoulders and a considerable portion of his body must have been exposed during the whole of the engagement. He wore a three-cornered cocked hat and a ban-yan or calico coat. After one of his men was killed by cannon ball, Prescott, perceiving that this had made some of the soldiers sick at heart, mounted tile para-pet and walked leisurely around it, cheering his soldiers by approbation and humor. His clothing was repeatedly spattered with the blood and the brains of the killed and wounded.”
Prescott’s men twice drove back the British assaults on the redoubt. When the British made a third attempt, his men were almost out of ammunition. After a final volley, he ordered a retreat from the redoubt. He was one of the last men to leave the defences, parrying bayonet thrusts with his ceremonial saber.